I will always remember this time: supporting parents during the pandemic
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I will always remember this time: supporting parents during the pandemic by Suzy Alexandra-Troy In this piece, I will be looking at my involvement, with other colleagues, on an intense project designed to support parents and parentsto-be, virtually, during the pandemic. I will reflect on conversations I had with these parents; conversations with colleagues, and the emotional impact of working on a project supporting parents struggling through a transitional time, whilst also negotiating my own way through the pandemic. The spring and summer of 2020 were the beginning of the season of Zoom. I was still working as a tutor for NCT and we had to quickly train teachers to be able to take all of NCT’s offerings online, as it became clear that the pandemic was taking a firm hold and swift action was needed to keep parent education accessible, for at least the foreseeable future. Before long, furlough became a familiar word, and indeed, I was furloughed from my day job. Soon after this, I took voluntary redundancy and began to consider my options. Then, a previous tutor colleague got in touch to say that an organisation called Best Beginnings had received a large grant from Barnardo’s to offer online antenatal and postnatal classes for parents. These would be provided free of charge, with the aim of supporting parents and parentsto-be through this period. Because of the situation, this was to be started as quickly as possible. We undertook training online, and met the others who would also be delivering the sessions. We were all qualified as antenatal or postnatal
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teachers/tutors, midwives or other health professionals. We also had co-facilitators, who worked for the charity, handling the Zoom Waiting Room, answering questions, and sharing videos and links which had been specifically created for the project. A few short weeks later, with sessions booked in our diaries, we were ready to go live. Each session was planned, and there were three sessions per group. We were informed that sessions should be responsive to whoever turned up on the day, and that the programme would evolve in response to parent feedback. It took a little while for the word to get out, so we had a couple of weeks of low numbers on the sessions, but soon, we were busy and the groups grew rapidly. We were up and running. We had busy WhatsApp groups, in which we could ask questions, share ideas and debrief conversations we’d had during the sessions. It was a steep learning curve, and, as we really got stuck in to facilitating the sessions, I learned how important it is to make sure everyone is on mute when they need to be! This took a lot of adjustment, as I am used to being in the centre of a group, where everyone can easily have their say. It was definitely harder to get people to ask questions, as the Zoom experience can be intimidating, and is not always conducive to group working. I suspect that participants found it more difficult to speak up when looking at a screen, rather than being in a room together. There seemed to be more of an expectation of the ‘classroom’ environment, which I have always tried to avoid in face-to-face classes. As we have all learned, teaching from home with the high frequency of interruptions – whether it is post arriving and making the dog bark, partners working in adjoining rooms, chairs not designed to be comfortable for sitting still for an hour and a half, and drilling, or tree cutting in the street below – is definitely not without challenges!
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